content

A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

Martin Kelley — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 15:38:03 +0000

Murphy is a political science prof in New Jersey and has written a new bio of William Penn. I suspect this Aeon post is a bit of sponsored content to promote the book but it’s still worth a read:

Penn was a man of paradoxical qualities. He espoused a radically egalitarian Quaker theology, insisting that something divine resided within each individual, yet he owned slaves on his American estate. He praised representative institutions such as parliament and the jury system, but spent years in hiding for his loyalty to an absolutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopted American,’ he wrote shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania in 1682, but spent only four of his remaining 36 years there. And he was chronically incapable of managing money, spending eight months in an English debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quickly became a commercial success.

https://aeon.co/ideas/hes-not-the-guy-on-quaker-oats-hes-much-more-interesting

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

Martin Kelley — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:39:12 +0000

The January issue of Friends Journal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a number of Black Friends Journal contributors have shared heartbreaking stories of not feeling welcome in Quaker circles. As we planned this issue, we self‐consciously added a question mark to the end of its title—“A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?” The choice of punctuation hints at a certain weariness—are we really still asking this?—along with the suggestion that maybe many Friends are content enough with the status quo that they might simply answer “no” to a call for diversity.

Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives — Friends Journal

January 2019: A Racially Diverse Society of Friends? Full Issue Access Features: Are We Ready to Make the…

Friends Journal

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

Martin Kelley — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 02:40:14 +0000

From Emily Provance:

An under-45 communications strategy, in contrast, would mostly involve social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, possibly Tumblr or Pinterest). Articles would be short and would contain mostly content directly relevant to the reader—or, if the content were not directly relevant, it would be single-story narratives with an emphasis on personal impact. Announcements would come out through messenger apps or text messages, with a strong element of user control about which announcements to receive and which not. Photos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of generational determinism. I think generational ideas are more like underlying trends that get more or less traction over time. And Quaker digital outreach in particular has been a thing for a quarter century now. But the underlying message—that some people need to be reached digitally while others are still best served by print—is a sound one and I’m glad Emily’s bringing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argument. I remember having these discussions around an FGC outreach committee table fifteen years ago: surely we’re all on board about the need for digital outreach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line

Who tells our story

Martin Kelley — Thu, 31 May 2018 16:00:33 +0000

Kathleen Wooten asks Who tells our story

Who tells our story in this time? In today’s world of immediate news, and social media, and everyone having a twitter account and an opinion – there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Some of it might be damaging and outright manipulative. Some of it might just be misinformed people, who are confusing Quakers (for example) with Amish folks, or Shakers.

One of the reasons I’ve been so involved in Quaker media is my longtime concern that we’re in increasing danger of being defined by outsiders. A mainstream site with a page on Quakers can easily show up higher in search results than pages we create. For a long time back in the day, an entry on Quakers written by some Unitarians on Religioustolerance.com was a top hit. Google and Facebook have long had more say in defining Quaker beliefs than any of our national organizations. Even when real-life Quakers are involved— in Facebook groups, Wikipedia editing, blogging, and the original Quaker.org—there was none of the kind of formal Quaker process (for better and worse) that historically characterized Quaker publishing.

One happy irony is that Kathleen herself came in through a channel with no Quaker involvement. She writes: ” I had never heard of Quakers until I took an internet quiz in my mid- thirties.” This is almost certainly the “Belief-o-Matic” Beliefnet quiz (confirmed in comments). The site was founded as a venture-capital-fueled attempt to win the advertising religion market in the heady years of what we retrospectively call the dot-com bubble. The original quiz dates further back to a still-going site called SelectSmart, which hosts dozens of quizzes (“Which Bond Villain Are You?,” “What Pizza Topping Are You?,” “Pink Floyd Album Selector”), one of the most popular of which is “Belief System Selector.” The site is Curt and Lori Anderson, a husband-and-wife team; he was the techie who programmed the quizzes; she hunted for content. She used online sources and her local library to coming up with questions for him to plug in for the belief quiz (read some of the story here and also here). Beliefnet started hosting it independently, giving it a UI refresh and renaming it Belief-o-Matic. For whatever reasons of wonky algorithms huge percentages of people who took the test came out as “Liberal Quaker” or “Orthodox Quaker.” No Friends were involved in the quiz, hence the archaic names (few Friends have identified as Orthodox for generations).

In the 2000s, this quiz was inadvertently far more successful in outreach than any program conceived by Friends (sorry PYM/FGC/Pendle Hill donors). I think we’ve all become better at media and telling our own story but Kathleen’s question—who tells our story in this time?—is still a key one. After all, Lori Anderson’s checklist of beliefs (on SelectSmart and Beliefnet) are probably one of the most-read definitions of Liberal Quakerism.

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The open (Quaker) web

Martin Kelley — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 02:01:24 +0000

Chris Hardie’s semi-viral manifesto championing the open internet isn’t about Quakerism per se, but Chris is a Friend (and one time web host to everything Quaker within a hundred miles of Richmond, Ind.). Since the rise of corporate gate-keeping websites and then social media, I’ve worried that they represent some of the largest and least visible threats to the Quaker movement.

I use it all as a tool, for sure. But there are many ways in which we’re increasingly defined by corporations with no Quakers and no interest in us except for whatever engagement numbers they can generate. Look at the nonsense at many of the open Quaker Facebook groups as an obvious example. People with limited experience or knowledge and relatively fringe ideas can easily dominate discussion just by posting with a frequency that involved or careful Friends couldn’t match. Facebook doesn’t care if it’s a zoo as long as people come back to read the latest outrageous comment thread. Just because the topic is Quaker doesn’t mean the discourse really holds well to our values, historical or modern.

Add to this that Google and Facebook could make any of our Quaker-owned websites nearly invisible with a tweak of algorithms (this is not hypothetical: Facebook has dinged most publisher Pages over the years).

The open web has a lot of pluses. I’m glad to see a Friend among its prominent champions and I’d like to see Quaker readers seeking it out more (most easily by straying of Facebook and subscribing to blogs’ email lists). From Hardie:

Of course, there is an alternative to Facebook and other walled gardens: the open web. The alternative is the version of the Internet where you own your content and activity, have minimal dependence on third party business models, can discover new things outside of what for-profit algorithms show you, and where tools and services interact to enhance each other’s offerings, instead of to stamp each other out of existence.

https://chrishardie.com/2018/04/rebuilding-open-web/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

Martin Kelley — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 11:52:17 +0000

Johan Maurer looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and wonders whether we’re using it authentically: Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

I want us to use our dearest cliches honestly, but if they sometimes seem weakened by overuse, the solution isn’t necessarily to discard them. Maybe we can rediscover their provocative content and test whether the promise within is already being fulfilled or could once again be fulfilled in our time.

I appreciate that Johan also asks if we’re hoarding this insight and claiming it as particularly Quaker. One of my personal tests for adopting Quaker peculiarities of practice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopted by other Christians (or even other people of faith in general) as universal principles. An attitude of plainness not based on social pressures or uniforms is one I think would bring humility and insight to any follower of Christ, for example.

That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us directly seems to be an obvious truth–the heart of the resurrection and of Pentecost and the apostles’ church plants. That some churches insert people in between is a potential distraction but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple houses and in their lives.

The only other take-away I have from this universality test is that it centers the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human institutions. This was the obvious point in the 1650s as Quakers broke up religious meetings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meetinghouses and mission statements and staff flowcharts don’t mean anything if they get in the way of the purpose of our society, which is simply to help one another settle down, recognize that Inward Christ, and learn the corporate skills discernment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invitation to knock on Jesus’s door is extended to all, not just those of us calling ourselves Quaker.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/04/has-christ-come-to-teach-his-people.html

How does Truth prosper among us?

Martin Kelley — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 18:59:09 +0000

New England Friend Brian Drayton recently visited Philadelphia and recounted host ministry on the old Quaker query, How does Truth prosper among us?

Friends in the past used “Truth” in ways that went well beyond a simple proposition or assertion of fact, a “truth claim,” some specific content. “Truth” instead connoted something of the action and the reality of God’s work in the world, as we experience and try to live it.

Used by individuals as a greeting, some variation of “How does the truth fare with thee?” can be a reminder that the friendships of Friends can be spiritually deeper than “yo, whassup?” informality (at one point Friends would even eschew “Good morning” as a greeting on the chance that the morning might actually not be comparatively good).

Quaker Ranter Archives

Martin Kelley — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:42:01 +0000

Categories:

Quaker: As the blog name implies, I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends, known colloquially as Quakers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our society and its interactions with the larger world. I’ve been blogging as a Friend since 2003. I read through a lot of Quaker material every day; much of the content on QuakerRanter is a curation of the content that catches my fancy.

Frequent topics of interest: Nonviolence, Media & Tech, Design, Family, South Jersey/Philly, and Photography.

Newsletter Archives:

Every Friday, that week’s posts are collected together into a email newsletter. Here are the most recent editions:

Johan Maurer: Whose faith? Whose practice?
04/17/2026
Cesar Chavez and me
03/20/2026
March 29: A Quaker Trans Day of Visibility Gathering
03/13/2026
Less is More: The Testament of Ann Lee
01/30/2026
Unintentional Consequences, Intentional Repair
01/09/2026

Blog Archives:

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content

A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

Who tells our story

The open (Quaker) web

Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

How does Truth prosper among us?

Quaker Ranter Archives

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Newsletter Archives:

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